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Prior to joining TriMed in 2014, Dave was an independent reporter and copywriter. He has worked in journalism, public relations and marketing for more than 25 years, concentrating on business, healthcare, technology and religion. He has also worked extensively in fundraising communications, freelancing for local, national and international charities.

Enterprise imaging is top of mind for radiology because radiology has a place at the top of many efforts to drive “every-ology” image access into hospitals and health systems across the U.S. One health system lighting the way into enterprise imaging’s future is the Mayo Clinic. The multi-state, Rochester, Minn.-based institution has been pursuing enterprise imaging since as far back as 1999.

If you put a leading-edge 3D visualization platform in the hands of a fearlessly tech-forward radiologist, don’t be surprised if some real innovation emerges. That’s one lesson to be drawn from a recent cross-subspecialty adaptation of a Fujifilm Synapse® 3D component called Sector MPR. The component was designed to let abdominal radiologists render CT slices of structures and lesions in the abdomen to match their appearance on ultrasound displays. Sanjay Prabhu, MBBS, FRCR, discovered he could use this tool to visualize, in much the same way, the brains of babies who receive neuroimaging with CT or MRI.

The past several years have seen the development of a de facto stealth campaign against screening mammography. “Vast Study Casts Doubts on Value of Mammograms,” the New York Times bullhorned in 2014. “Why Getting a Mammogram May Cause More Trouble Than It’s Worth,” a Prevention headline blared in 2016. “It’s Time to End Mammograms, Some Experts Say,” trumpeted Time this past December. All of this is fueled, of course, by the never-ending disputes over guidelines issued by numerous authoritative groups.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is already changing the way radiologists do their jobs. And while much of the action is in mundane task relief, exciting opportunities are emerging for the technology to push radiology’s role in personalized medicine beyond what it could accomplish with human eyes alone.

Look to RSNA 2017 for hints on what to prepare for in 2018 and you may take some comfort in the familiar: The profession-wide challenges and opportunities that were common across radiology over the past year aren’t clearing out to make room for entirely new concerns and changes. However, you’ll also need to reckon with the reality of ever-advancing—and in many areas, only accelerating—change.

The more tau accumulation in the brain, the greater the likelihood that neuroimaging will reveal similarly elevated levels of brain beta amyloid. However, the buildup of these proteins does not affect the cognitive status of patients with Parkinson’s disease, according to a PET-based study published online Dec. 11 in JAMA Neurology.

Patients who have advanced liver cancer with blockage or narrowing of the blood vessel that brings blood to the liver from the intestines—i.e., portal vein thrombosis—are safely and effectively treated by interventional radiologists administering the isotope yttrium-90 (Y90) for radioembolization, according to a study conducted at Northwestern University and published online Dec. 7 in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

Scientists at Arizona State University have demonstrated the clinical possibilities of live-cell computed tomography (LCCT), successfully completing a proof-of-concept project aimed at detailing the nuclei and mitochondria in cancer and immune-system cells—live and in 3D.